1 Primary to Secondary School Transitions, Parental Characteristics, and Career Patterns

The degree to which wealth is transmitted from one generation to the next is re-garded as a measure for the equality of opportunities in modern societies. One crucial element of intergenerational mobility is the way parents influence the education of their offsprings. Unlike in the UK, in Germany an important decision about which educa-tional track to follow is made at a relatively early stage: after primary school, at the age of ten. In this paper, we use micro data to analyse parents ’ influence on school choice. Our analysis covers the last 6 decades. We illustrate a strong correlation be-tween the choice of secondary school track, and subsequent educational careers. We demonstrate that parents ’ educational background and professional class have an impor-tant impact on school choices and, indirectly, on wages. We find a slight convergence for individuals from different parental background over the last decades. We also find convergence between males and females. Addressing possible sources of shifts of educa-tional achievements over generations, our results suggest that the shift towards better secondary education is largely explained by changes in parents ’ tastes for better educa-tion, and less so by intergenerational transmission of a gradual increase in the education level across generations. ∗We are grateful for useful comments on earlier versions of this paper to Wendy Carlin and John Micklewright